Numbers
by Saturn's Hikari
Summary: ."Besides Frieda, I'm crazy." he says with a slight shake of blond hair, as if that explains everything... In a way, though, it does.


Hey!  
This got into my head and won't let go. It's a good thing I'm off this week, so I could just sit down and type. This is based off a drabble I wrote, it's at the bottom. This wasn't content to stay in 100 words, so now it's like... alot. I'm not really sure if I got everything across, but I'm pretty content with it.Oh! For this, please assume that there are same sex marriages in the state of Dakota.It's this new thing that happened last night when I typed this up. You can marry in Dakota.So this is **Slash**- I've warned you.

Thanks to **Dimitri Aidan, EyesLikeSilk, leev **and** Kuurosuki** for the inspiration and revies to 'numbers'. I think it was the "deliciously creepy" that really started it all. So please read and as always please review!

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**Numbers

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It was a white hallway and it seemed to go on forever.

"I'm so glad you could stop by, Ms. Frieda." said 'Hi-my-name's-Susan' as she led her down the white hall, stopping ever so often at the stations to show a card or punch in some numbers. "You're the first visitors we've had in a while."

"Really? I thought… I thought his parents came by.."

"Oh, no. Parents? I haven't seen them in about year- that's what often happens with cases like his. Relatives brush it out of their mind, try to forget. The one person that comes by regularly is Bruce Wayne."

She stopped in the empty hall and stared at the smiling nurse. "Wayne? The millionaire?"

"Yep. He's the one that pays the bills, too." She babbled. Although to be fair she probably didn't talk to people much. "Once a month, every second Saturday, he just stops in. Awfully polite too. Not at all what you'd expect him to be. He's nice to him too. They talk for an hour or so, about what I have no clue- but it must be interesting to keep him focused, he can't really- oh! Here we are."

She stopped in front of small door, with a single brass knob. It was plain wood, like the door to her own dorm.

"No locks?" Frieda questioned.

She grinned. "Oh, no. Why would there be? After all, all that-" she waved at the security they'd just come through. "is to keep other people from coming in."

She started to open her mouth, to ask more questions, but Susan had already pushed her through the door and shut it behind her.

She stood in the entrance and stared. It was just like a hotel room only in white. To her left there was a bathroom, with a sink, a toilet and a shower. It was clean and stark white. This was an empty bathroom, something she hadn't seen in a long time. Living in a college dorm with two room mates, girls; they didn't have an inch to spare. Does he not use this bathroom? But no, she walked in and touched the green toothbrush lying on the sink counter, then tube toothpaste next to it. It was almost empty.

Looking around it, though. There was plain soap in the soap dish. Nothing in the shower, no washcloths, no razors. It didn't even have curtains, just a naked porcelain tub.

She backed out of the room, shaken by some nameless dread. How can he live like this? She thought, leaning against the wall, plain whitewash, and then she became aware of a sound. Writing? He's writing?

She walked further intro the room. A bed jutted into the room from against one wall, but the other wall- it was bins. Bins stacked up in rows of six, three deep, and filled the wall eight across. There was a desk, too, in the far corner, lit by a single lamp above it. Stacks of papers near reached the ceiling and beneath the light he wrote.

"Hello Richie."

"Hey, Frieda." He nodded, not even looking up from his work and placing a stack of paper in a bin. It was a clear one, like all the others lining the wall and the only thing beside paper on the desk. There wasn't a single picture, and he was thinner, she thought, the plain gray pants and white undershirt hanging off him like costumed ghost sheets. He seemed so venerable, younger, in a way. Like he'd just stopped aging at seventeen. She sat on the bed next to the desk. It was neatly made and she traced a trail of dust with her finger as she scrutinized him closer

There were lead smudges up his forearm that cover the scars and a big black one beneath his right eye. . He wasn't wearing glasses and maybe that was the difference. She'd never seen him sans glass wear or Gear helmet. Ever since she'd met him in elementary school, those glasses had been permanently attached. Just like Virgil….

"How are you?"

He nodded, politely and answers even more politely, though still not looking at her. "I'm fine. And you?"

"I'm getting married." Straight to the point- he used to need that directness. He turns, placing the pad in his lap, and then she finally sees his face.

He looks… different. Not the almost man she remembered. He's thinner, his blond hair longer, stragglier almost as pale as his white translucent skin. His lips are cracked and his whole face seems washed out- like a man in his 40's instead of just hitting twenty. So old.

And his eyes… A deep blue that in normal times would have sparkled, would have shone with happiness and love. But these eyes…. in the light they still glimmer, but it's a different kind of shine. Like the cold gleam off a computer screen, only cracked and distorted. Behind his eyes, he's shattered into a little bits and there's nothing left of Richie to look out from them any more.

Empty….

"Who are you marrying?" He asks, not even watching his hand as it draws a circle upon the paper. It's a perfect circle.

"Daisy."

His eyes lock into hers, wild and broken as the pencil snaps in two- a lone crack in the silence. Frieda stared at him, at his guilt and pain still so raw as the words tumbled out in a hoarse choke. He's not disgusted, how could he be? He's in shock."same sex marriage? ….We could have… Daisy…there's marriage?"

" I want you to come." she whispered, longing for that cheerful friend she once knew. "We want you to come."

He stared at her with his shattered eyes, mouth slightly agape as he went on drawing with just a tiny sliver of lead.

"why?"

"Why? I've known you since kindergarten. You're my friend and I want you to be standing in my wedding." she said, leaning in, trying to hold his hands. He leans away, his hand still going. "I want to look around and see you there."

His eyes narrowed as the circle was cut and divided. "I wasn't at Sharon's. "

Frieda flinched at this coldness. She remembered that day. Adam flinching the golden wedding bands, seeing the ghosts of another set. Sharon bursting in tears before the walk down the aisle. All the empty seats next Mr. Hawkins…

"And she missed you.. We all did."

"No." He turns back to the elaborate diagram his hand has drawn without him and starts writing, likeit'sone of those'geas' that hersci-fi roomate was always going on about.Richie's compelled to. He's more into whatever it is he's doing than listening to her. Like she's some piece of irrelevant equipment on one of his computers

"You can't live like this. Locked in a room, doing nothing. It's not right."

"I am doing something, only thing I can." he said, waving a hand at his papers and the bins. "What do you think all this is? It's everything my brain comes up with- particles accelerators, shrink rays, alternate dimensions, hover cars… it never stops."

"Besides, I'm crazy." He adds as if that explains everything.

In a way it does, because the words snap those memories right back into focus. Some things you'll never forget.

Yes, she remembers Richie's craziness.

Remembers waking up to sirens at midnight as the industrial half of Dakota imploded. Remembers that laughing sound, that _scream_. Remembers Daisy's hurried words, only one that really reached her: _**dead** _and the mad dash to the sidewalk before she puked. She remembers all the tears on what should have been a happy graduation day, the closed face that should have been smiling. Remembers a silent hospital visit that day after the funeral- white hair againest white sheets.

She remembers that he shed no tears as he dropped their promise rings into the fresh dirt, that her own heart broke at the soft 'plink' and that he stood frozen stock still, even when it started to rain..

But most of all she remembers Richie's broken eyes.

"Richie… " she leans closer and those same eyes backed way. "you have let go… it's been three years...he wouldn't have wanted this."

He stood up fist clenched, frail limbs trembling, and the emotion reminded her of a different him. A younger him that cried all night on her couch from a fight, that decked his boyfriend and kissed him hard, that happier Richie that made him dance at the prom, admist the staresa and whispers; that she heard whisper. _So many thoughts in my head, V, I don't even know what I'm thinking sometimes, but you, you keep me sane._

"Don't you think I know that? Don't you think I know what he would have wanted? I'm a super brain, remember? Brain-boy!" He yelled, flinging the bits of pencil aside. "He would have wanted me to get filthy rich and help people and marry with a stupid cottage and picket fence- to be happy without him…" _You keep me sane_

He collapsed back into his chair, looking at her with his broken eyes as a hand scrambled for a pencil to put to paper.

"…but I can't."

**000**

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**Numbers

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**He writes. Thousands of pages he fills, formulas upon formulas. Beyond the most advanced Physics and Calculus- past the point where numbers cease to be _numbers_ and become _things_- he creates. No computers in his little room- they couldn't comprehend it. Even Backpack's obsolete.

The universe has four dimensions- three of space and one of time…

He eats the food that is brought and goes to the bathroom, ever with pencil upon paper . He doesn't sleep- doesn't _need _sleep, the drive that pushes him never slacks; he has to work the numbers.

They are all that he has left.

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**The End

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I'm not really sure if I got the extent of Richie's insaneness across. What do you think? Please review! 


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